Currently, consumer products companies bring new products to market inefficiently. For example, Marketing generates a product idea. Next, they communicate this idea to the rest of the company. Usually, a hard copy of a computer software spreadsheet highlighting specific details of a product is distributed to all Strategic Business Units (“SBUs”). SBUs integral to this process include: Sales, to communicate the new product idea through the marketplace; Finance, to obtain proper financing; Accounting, to keep track of costs; Research and Development, to develop products; Packaging, to develop all packaging components; Logistics, to plan manufacturing, filling, and distribution of the product; Purchasing, to buy raw materials and components from applicable vendors; Quality Assurance, to monitor incoming and outgoing quality; Manufacturing, to make the product; and, Distribution, to get the final product to the retail establishment for sale to the final customer.
Each SBU is dependent upon one another and uses the same basic information to perform their individual job functions. Unfortunately, most SBU'S use software packages specifically tailored to their disciplines and incompatible with those of other SBUs they must interact with. This forces each SBU to generate new hard copies, using discipline specific software, of the same information to execute various job tasks and to communicate with subsequent SBUs in the development process. Each subsequent SBU throughout the company repeats the process (i.e. prepare a new hard copy of the same information). However, no software package exists today which starts with Marketing and ends with Distribution, or in other words is capable of being used throughout the entire life-cycle of a new product/package development.
Therefore, there is a need for a single computerized system which can be used by Marketing, and each subsequent SBU to assist the process of getting a product to the consumer.